


should've left my phone at home ('cause this is a disaster)

by shinealightonme



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Customer Service & Tech Support, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-04 19:20:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14599959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme
Summary: Most of the interesting customers that Adam meets areterribleinteresting rather thanfuninteresting.The hot guy who can't keep a cell phone alive might be both.





	should've left my phone at home ('cause this is a disaster)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [two_of_swords](https://archiveofourown.org/users/two_of_swords/gifts).



> So two_of_swords recently had one and a half treadmill-based cell phone disasters, and my dumb muse was all, "yeah, that."

The Apple Genius Bar is the best job Adam has ever had, but that doesn't make it good. There's no actual physical peril and his bosses and coworkers are more indifferent than cruel, which ought to be true of every work place but, as he's learned from the many jobs he's had working his way through high school and college, it really, really isn't.

On the downside, he has to deal with _the public:_ a never-ending stream of hipsters, the technologically illiterate, people who drop seven hundred dollars on an iPad but yell at him when he can't validate their mall parking, dudes who thought they couldn't get viruses from porn because "it's a MacBook," and -- 

\-- whoever the hell this guy is. Adam can already tell this guy is going on that list that every service worker keeps, the _unforgettable customers_ list.

"My phone broke."

"I can see that," Adam says. The item on the counter in front of him is an iPhone 3, or it used to be. It has a cracked screen the same way that Adam is tired of minimum wage jobs. He's pretty sure if he breathed on it wrong it would collapse.

The ex-phone's owner is an unreal level of hot, even though he's scowling at Adam. Or maybe a little because he's scowling at Adam. "Bi" is turning out to be the most straightforward part of Adam's sexuality; it's the attraction toward the _endlessly terrifying_ that confuses him.

"So fix it."

"Oh, and here I though you just wanted to show off." The good news about the service industry: any second now this guy is going to act like a jerk, and that will kill any attraction Adam feels. Until then, well, the best defense is a good offense, and it's not like he's _bad_ at annoying people. "What happened to it?"

"It broke."

"How?"

"I dropped it."

It doesn't matter how he broke it, because again, it's an _iPhone 3_ , there's no warranty on the planet that would still be covering it. But Adam is curious. People who don't want to talk about their tech disasters usually caused said disasters by doing something embarrassing.

Although he can't really see how internet porn could be responsible for a cell phone having a _hole_ through the middle of it.

"Dropped it where?" he asks.

"Treadmill."

"How do you manage to screw up this badly on a treadmill?" Adam asks. "I thought those were specifically designed for people who couldn't handle the complexity of running in a straight line."

"I got tangled up in my headphones," the guy says, like this answers all of Adam's questions instead of raising another dozen. "Can you tell me how long it'll take to fix it?"

Adam shrugs. "Depends how long it takes you to find a trash can."

"That's not really helpful."

"It's not really supposed to be," Adam says. "You did a number on this when you 'dropped it' -- " he doesn't do air-quotes, because air-quotes are for people who can't cram enough sarcasm into their voice to convey their skepticism by sound alone. Adam is not so weak -- "on the 'treadmill'."

 _Affronted_ is a disturbingly good look for this guy. "Why would I make that up?"

"Why would it be true?"

He sighs like he has been more wronged than any human in history, which is the opinion of about half of the customers Adam deals with on a daily basis. But he's not yelling at Adam or threatening to flame him on Yelp or demanding to speak to his manager, and that actually motivates Adam to help him.

"Look, there's not anything you can do for this phone beyond praying for a miracle. But if I send it back to the factory they can try to pull your data off it so at least you don't lose your contacts and photos."

He huffs, annoyed. "Can you send it to the factory and they don't pull any data off it? Just declare it a total loss?"

Adam blinks. This is definitely going on the _unforgettable customers_ list; he has never had a single person want _less_ reassurance that their data is fine. "Sure, I guess, but I can do that for you right now. No waiting."

"I want to be able to say that an expert told me that."

Adam taps on his name tag. "I am a genius."

The guy smirks. That's a nice look on him, too, though not any less disturbing.

Adam decides not to ask him if the phone is evidence in some kind of crime. Maybe just this once he wants to preserve the fantasy of a hot guy not being a complete jerk.

"Do you need a new phone," he asks, instead, "or would that just interfere with your fast paced treadmill life style?" Given the decade-old cell phone and the complete disregard for his data, he expects a _no_.

To his surprise, the guy sticks around and buys a new one. Adam hooks him up with the oldest, least flashy phone that Apple sells, not that anything could ever compete with the bulkiness and inconvenience of an iPhone 3. Truly, this guy lost a treasure.

Adam rings him up and, after a moment's hesitation, punches in a code to give him a discount. Technically he's only supposed to do it if the store fucked up and needs to appease an angry customer, but hell, Adam never gives discounts, the store owes him one. And if he can't help out the customer who's given him what is bound to be his new favorite _weird customer_ story, who can he help?

If anyone does accuse him of giving his friends deals, he can rightly point out that he hadn't even known the guy's name until he'd seen it on his credit card, Ronan Lynch, and that he's never seen him before or since.

-

Ronan comes back two weeks later.

"Treadmill again?" Adam asks.

He'd figured Ronan was actually in the store to buy a phone case or a charger, one of those accessories you don't remember to buy until you need it, but Ronan says, "yeah."

"Okay," Adam asks. He doesn't sound as disinterested as he's like to, but -- "seriously, how? Don't tell me you got tangled in your headphones, this phone doesn't even have a jack."

Ronan says, "you need to engage all of your senses for a workout," and then stops.

Okay, apparently that's all the answer Adam is going to get. What the _fuck_.

"No," although to be fair, Ronan does look like he knows what he's talking about when it comes to gyms. "It's a treadmill, you just need to run. You could do it with your eyes shut. You need one sense, max."

"What do you care, you think I'm lying anyway."

"No, now I believe you. No one would tell that lie twice."

Adam gets him set up with a replacement, and two weeks is well under warranty, so he doesn't even have to worry about the pricing. Now his story about the weird gym rat with the phone problems has a funny second chapter, happily ever after, the end.

-

Ronan comes in three weeks later with a Samsung.

"What the hell." Adam has abandoned even the pretense of professionalism. He thinks that's deserved. "How many phones do you have?"

"One," Ronan says, confused. "Why would I want more than one phone?"

"Okay, then whose phone is this?"

"Mine."

"You have an iPhone," Adam says. "What happened to the iPhone I sold you? Treadmill again?"

"I dropped a barbell on it."

Adam shakes his head. "Okay, and this one, what, fainted during an intense yoga session?"

"I don't know what's wrong with it. It won't turn on."

It's a disappointingly normal problem. Fortunately there is other weird shit going on. Namely:

"You realize this isn't an Apple product, right?"

Ronan says, "the guys at the Sprint store are all ugly."

To his intense and immediate horror, Adam _blushes_. Adam does not _blush_ , Adam does not get giddy around cute boys, Adam barely has emotions. And yet here he is, face red, and -- oh God, he's smiling.

He bites his lip and looks down, starts fiddling around with Ronan's stupid Samsung phone that he doesn't know anything about. Maybe if he moves his hands around enough it will distract from this horrible thing his face is doing.

He can't get it to turn on, so he's not sure it's a very effective distraction.

"When was the last time it was on?"

Ronan pauses like he has to think about it. Seriously, who the hell is he? Most of Adam's customers throw a fit if their phones are dead for five seconds. "Yesterday? I think I had it on before I went rafting."

Adam glares up at him, blush forgotten. "Did you take the phone rafting with you?"

"It was in my pocket, yeah."

"You didn't put together that maybe that was related to it not working today?"

"I'm not a tech person."

"You're barely a person," Adam informs him, and Ronan looks weirdly amused. "You can try soaking it in rice to dry it out, but it's probably too late for that to work." He considers their previous interactions and adds, " _dry_ rice," because he's kind of worried that that needs to be specified.

Ronan nods his head and mutters something under his breath as he's leaving that sounds upsettingly like " _dry_ rice," like he thinks he's going to forget it by the time he gets home.

-

Ronan comes back a week later.

"Where did you even _find_ a Blackberry?" Adam flips the device over, peers at it, glories in its ancient mysteries.

"It's a hand-me-down," Ronan says. "From a friend."

"You have a friend who's a nineteen-nineties corporate lawyer?"

Ronan snorts. "That's his style, yeah."

"And what horrible fate has befallen this one?"

"It's ugly."

"It's a Blackberry."

"No, the screen is ugly -- " he reaches for the phone to turn it so they can both see the screen. His hand brushes over Adam's, lingering a little too long to be an accident.

Adam's face is burning and he's too flustered and tongue-tied to call bullshit on the fact that Ronan came to an _Apple Store_ to ask how to _customize the display settings_ on his _second-hand Blackberry_.

Adam is about as well-informed on how to program a Blackberry as he is on the intricacies of operating an abacus, but he's intelligent and tech savvy, so he manages to find a wallpaper that Ronan says doesn't make his eyeballs vomit.

He thinks, maybe, that Ronan was too picky about wallpapers. Like he didn't _want_ to find one too soon, and have to leave.

Adam swallows. Compared to every other time he's had to muster up his courage, this is such a small thing. He isn't going to let a cell phone defeat him.

He switches over to the contacts and punches in his own number, saves it down as _Adam_.

"There." He hands Ronan back the phone, his name still on display. "For the next time you need tech support."

Ronan is slow to take it. His hand covers Adam's again.

"If the phone's dead, how am I supposed to call you?"

Adam smiles. "Okay, next time you're about to do something stupid with your phone, call me first."

"And you'll talk me out of it?"

"Or I'll come watch you be a disaster," and Ronan grins back at him.

-

_im about to jump off cliff, does that count as a stupid thing_

_Depends_  
_What safety equipment do you have_

_theres' a trampoline athe bottom_

_That checks out, go for it_  
_Just leave your phone at the bottom of the cliff, your next of kin will appreciate the heirloom_

_jfc i have wingsuit ill be fine_

_I look forward to reading that text aloud at your funeral_  
_I will pronounce it such that the lack of proofreading is obvious_

Adam doesn't hear anything from Ronan for a while. Which is reasonable. He has a nascent text based flirtation with a virtual stranger. That's not a top priority. It's fine.

There's a really upsetting number of BASE jumping accident videos on YouTube, as it turns out.

His phone lights up, and he grabs it off the table before it even buzzes.

 _still alive_  
_somehow_  
_are yu surprised_

Adam thinks it over, crafts his text carefully and changes it three times before reverting back to his first draft: _I'm kind of amazed you exist at all_

That's fine. That's an appropriate amount of flirtation. Right? He's abrasive by nature, but he's been that way around Ronan since the beginning. It would be weird if he stopped completely.

Besides -- he thinks Ronan might be into the abrasiveness.

_don jinx it i'm goin again in a minte_

_Why?!_

He shuts his laptop. Those YouTube videos are clearly getting to him.

 _bored_  
_gotta do something_

Adam bites his lip.

_If you really want something to do, we could get dinner sometime_

There's no response.

It's fine. Adam is fine. Ronan is jumping off of cliffs, that's enough to keep anyone busy. He's out with whatever athletic, fit, attractive people jump off of cliffs for fun, and he'll get back to Adam when he's done with them. It's fine.

Adam lets himself groan into a pillow, but only for a second.

There's no response from Ronan for the rest of the day, and anxiety gives way to embarrassment. Maybe Ronan really did just want free tech support. Maybe he met someone who also has a glorious gym-toned body. Maybe he died in a tragic BASE jumping accident, and how sick is it that that thought is comforting? Maybe, maybe, maybe...

By the end of the second day Adam has stopped checking his phone. Thank God he has a couple of days away from the Apple store, a few days to let the idea of Ronan seep out of his consciousness, before he has to go back to a place that will remind him of him all over again. He's taking five classes this semester, so there's plenty of classroom hours and homework to keep him busy, and he has two shifts at his volunteer job, working with children from abusive homes, which is a thousand times worse than his Genius Bar job and which he would do every day if he could.

By the time his next shift at the Apple store comes up, he feels that he has, if not gotten over his disappointment and embarrassment, at least regained enough equilibrium to get through the day.

So of course Ronan walks into the store.

He's slouched over, hands in his pockets and looking even surlier than usual, glancing around like he already knows he isn't going to find what he's looking for.

And then he spots Adam.

He doesn't _light up_ , exactly, unless the light in question is one of those weird purple lights on Halloween decorations that are more ominous than complete darkness. But he comes to a dead halt and draws himself up, and he's fixed entirely on Adam.

Adam licks his lips. Ronan came here, to see him: there is absolutely, positively, completely no way that he is wrong about that.

Adam jerks his head, a clear gesture: _outside_.

Ronan pulls his hands out of his pockets, runs his palms against the sides of his jeans before nodding.

Adam mumbles something to his coworker about going on a break and ducks into the back of the store. He ditches his lanyard in the break room and ducks out through the back exit of the store; he can't do anything about the very obvious employee shirt he's wearing, but he'll do whatever he can to minimize the chances of getting cornered by someone's grandpa who wants to learn how to use The Face Time.

Ronan is waiting for him when he emerges, outside the next store over like he knows that Adam wants some space from his job. He looks nervous as hell, which doesn't even make sense. Adam asked _him_ out.

"What are you doing here?" he asks, more accusatory than he meant.

Ronan winces as he turns around, but he doesn't back down. "I wanted to say yeah."

Adam blinks. "Yeah, what?"

"Yeah, I want to get dinner with you."

His heart beats so hard that it's painful. "Really?"

Ronan shoves his hands back in his pockets. "I thought -- when you got off of work -- if you're not busy -- "

Adam takes pity on him, interrupts him before he can spin any more out of control. "I don't get off until nine, that's really too late for dinner."

Ronan's shoulders slump, and Adam realizes, too late, that that sounds like a soft brush off: _I can't, I'll be washing my hair that night --_

He takes a half-step forward, saying, "I mean -- " and Ronan's already saying, "well -- " and they both cut off and stare at each other.

Adam breaks away first, but he's smiling again, no matter how hard he's biting his lip.

"My sleep cycle's all fucked up anyway," Ronan says.

"Okay." Adam peeks up at him. "Let's get dinner tonight."

He'd really like to say that he played it cool, from that point on. Someday, when he tells this story, he will claim that he played it cool.

He does not play it cool.

But whose fault is that? Ronan looks so relieved about Adam agreeing to go out with him, and he's giddy off all that resolved anxiety, and before he knows it he's leaning into Ronan's personal space and pressing a kiss to his cheek.

Ronan turns his face, just enough to kiss him properly, light and lovely and full of promise.

"You're really sweet," Adam murmurs, their lips still pressed together, "but I should go back to work."

He can _feel_ Ronan frown, which is maybe why it's so easy to tell it's fake. "I'm not sweet."

"Sure you're not," Adam says, blatantly indulgent. He kisses Ronan again, with a little more heat this time, which is not going to help at _all_ with his goal of going back to work. On the other hand, going back to work is rapidly becoming a less important goal. "You came all this way to ask me out in person when you didn't have to, I really just thought you'd text me --"

He figures it out a split second before Ronan's face gives it away.

"What did you do to your phone now?"

Ronan mumbles, "I dropped it."

Adam laughs.

Ronan glares at him. It's about as convincing as his frown was. "It's your fault."

"Uh-huh. How do you figure?"

"Your stupid text made me -- " He gestures with his hand, a flaily jerky motion " -- and I dropped it."

"There goes the myth that Blackberrys were indestructible."

"It's an antique," Ronan says. "It had old fucking bones."

"You're committing to a claim that your phone had _bones_."

Ronan shrugs. "And I might have been right at the edge of the cliff when I dropped it."

Adam buries his smile against Ronan's chest. "All right, let me see it."

"See what?"

"Whatever new disaster phone you've unearthed," Adam says. "I might as well see it now so I can start googling how to fix it if it gets dropped in a jar of marmalade or set on fire."

"Nothing's going to happen to my phone."

" _Dropped it off of a cliff_ ," Adam repeats.

Ronan sighs, his chest moving out and in in a most delightful fashion, and pulls out --

Adam glances down and laughs. It's one of those phones they give preschoolers so they can call their parents if anyone tries to stranger danger them.

"My brother thinks he's a fucking comedian," Ronan explains.

"I think he's right."

"You know, I was going to ask you for your number again, but if you don't think my phone is good enough for your number -- "

Adam snakes the phone out of Ronan's hand before he can raise his bluff. "I'm just surprised that this thing even _can_ save contacts."

"It can save contacts. Five contacts. Whatever, that's a lot."

"Only five, and I make the cut?"

Ronan shrugs. "If you want."

"I'm onto you," Adam says, flipping through the phone's settings, such as they are. "You're sweet."

Ronan blows in his ear. "I thought I was a disaster."

"You are."

"Thank you."

"A very sweet disaster," he finishes, and slips the phone into Ronan's pocket and slides away toward the store before he can object.

-

Ronan doesn't replace the baby phone, out of some contest of pride that makes a lot more sense to Adam than Adam is strictly comfortable with.

Ronan has had the baby phone for over two years, as a matter of fact, which Adam would know if he were thinking about it, because it's their anniversary. But he isn't thinking about Ronan's phone, because _it's their anniversary_ and he isn't thinking about _anything_ except the tight knot of anxiety in his stomach, the one that's the same shape and size as the ring box that hidden in their picnic basket.

The date was entirely Ronan's plan, which both gave Adam the idea to propose and made him horribly second guess himself about proposing. What if Ronan felt like he was stepping on his toes? What if Ronan was annoyed by the fact that Adam was forcing him to admit that the "lowkey" "casual" "who the fuck even likes rowboats, anyway, this is going to suck" evening he'd planned for their anniversary was in fact romantic and heartfelt?

But -- he wanted to ask. He wanted, badly, to propose. And Ronan was giving him such a perfect opportunity, a quiet night alone, just the two of them, no friends, no work, no technology. They'd both shoved their phones in the ratty old basket that had belonged to some ancestor of Ronan's, along with some food and a bottle of wine, and they hadn't so much as looked at the time since. They're present, they're in the moment, they're in love --

Adam thinks he's about to die.

He breathes in deeply.

"Ronan."

Ronan looks up, smiles, and lifts one hand up off the oar to reach for Adam at the same time that Adam is reaching for the picnic basket.

Adam sees the collision happening, as though in slow motion. Which is great. He has plenty of time to change his movement, readjust --

He overshoots and sends picnic basket _flying_ over the side of the rowboat.

Ronan barks out a laugh even as Adam, panicked, jumps up from his seat and tries to save the basket.

The entire boat flips over.

"We said we weren't doing presents," Ronan says, treading water, "but fuck, if this is your idea of a gift I'll take it."

Adam, meanwhile, splashes through the water to the picnic basket. It's made of straw and thus floats, which he's thankful for until he realizes that it flipped over and dumped its contents.

"Shit." He digs through the sodden remains of soggy sandwiches, just to be sure. "Shit!"

"They're just cell phones," Ronan says, doing his damnedest to flip the rowboat back over again. "Who cares about cell phones?"

"I don't care about the phones," Adam says, "I care about the ring."

Ronan has gotten the boat so it's resting on its side, but at Adam's pronouncement he lets it drop back with a _slap_ as it hits the water.

"What?" The look on his face is even more freezing to Adam than the temperature of the water -- and fuck, why did their anniversary have to be in the middle of _winter_ , anyway?

"I thought -- this was going to be a nice night, I thought I could...anyway, it's screwed up now."

Ronan stares at him.

"You -- " Ronan stops, and then, without any warning, dives under the surface of the water.

Adam starts after him before he thinks better of it, before he realizes that Ronan wasn't being _pulled under_ or suffering from a sudden cramp or anything. He just -- chose to go swimming, underwater, and Adam clings to the rowboat and tries to mimic how Ronan had almost flipped it over, dithering all the while. What if Ronan cuts himself on something on the lake bottom, what if Ronan hits his head on the boat coming back up to the surface, what if Ronan is just swimming away from Adam out of view as fast as he can --

Ronan surfaces with a loud gasp of air. Adam drops the boat with another smack of metal on water.

Ronan is alive and well and _here_ and okay, sure, he's holding the stupid fucking ring box, but Adam is way more excited about those first three things.

"Is this is?"

"Were there a _lot_ of engagements rings at the bottom of the lake, that you might have found the wrong one?"

"Oh, yeah," Ronan says, wiping lake water out of his irritated red eyes with one hand and holding the ring box out to Adam with the other. "This place must be break-up central."

Adam does, all sarcasm aside, take the box and grin with open relief when the ring inside is the same one he'd picked out.

"Okay, well, guess you got lucky."

"Yup." Ronan holds his hand out again -- not the dainty proffering of a hand in marriage, but a grasping claw. "Gimme."

Adam pulls the ring away from him by all of a millimeter. "What if I'd have a speech planned?"

Ronan snorts. "Right, your plan, which hasn't been ruined at all."

"Yeah, yeah," Adam grumbles, and _extremely carefully_ tugs the ring free from the box and slides it onto Ronan's finger.

As soon as the ring is securely on his finger -- which he must be judging from feel alone since he doesn't so much as look at it -- Ronan grabs Adam by the back of the neck and kisses him.

Given that they're clinging to the side of the rowboat, they bob up and down and it's freezing and Adam ends up with water up his nose.

Given that they're engaged, Adam doesn't give a shit about _any_ of that.

Ronan finally breaks away.

"I can't believe you destroyed my phone," he says, almost as though he cares.

"You hated that phone," Adam points out.

"It was a gift," he insists. "From my brother.

"It was a snide practical joke from your brother that you were too stubborn to call him out on."

"And now he's gonna think he won."

"If you'd rather have the phone than the ring, I could go diving for it -- " and Ronan kisses him again before Adam can even swim a foot away from the still upside-down rowboat.

"We're going to get hypothermia," Adam says eventually, "it's freezing."

"Mm-hm," Ronan says, like he agrees, and then kisses him again.

-

Adam's favorite _weird customer_ story doesn't really have a good ending anymore. He's fine with that. He likes _stupid shit my husband does_ stories better, anyway.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Blue:** I can't decide how incompetent Ronan is.  
>  **Henry:** Very, that is obvious.  
>  **Blue:** Yeah, no, that goes without saying, but incompetent in what way? Is he bad at phones, or is he _bad at flirting?_  
>  **Gansey:** You're not suggesting that he was breaking his phones on purpose to have an excuse to keep going back to the Apple Store.  
>  **Henry:** I can imagine Lynch causing a great deal of property damage. Especially when someone as fine as Adam is on the line.  
>  **Blue:** Adam _is_ pretty hot.  
>  **Gansey:** Can we please limit ourselves to _either_ disparaging my best friend's character _or_ making lascivious comments about his new beau?  
>  [Blue and Henry exchange a look that means, we'll dish about Adam later]  
>  **Henry:** I think we must concede, as tantalizing as the alternative is, that Lynch's technophobia outweighs all else.  
>  **Gansey, slowly:** He did have an iPhone 3...  
>  **Blue:** Yeah, he's bad with phones. Damn.  
>  **Gansey:** He had the same phone for seven years. Seven years, and then we're supposed to believe that he went through four phones in a matter of _weeks?_  
>  [thoughtful silence]  
>  **Blue:** Nah. I don't buy that he's clever enough to come up with this scheme.  
>  **Henry:** You classify this scheme as clever?  
>  **Blue:** You can't say it didn't work.  
>  **Gansey:** Do we need to ask him? Do we even want to know, if he did?  
>  **Henry:** I for one do not want to know. Let this be as The Lady Or The Tiger, a grand unsolved mystery for the ages.  
>  **Blue:** Ugh, figures you'd come down on the side of the teases.  
>  **Henry:** I do not recall you complaining about that before.  
>  **Blue:** Sh, you'll upset Gansey. He's too _proper_ for that kind of talk.  
>  **Gansey:** As long as this conversation is over, I'm fine with anything.  
>  [and they lived obliviously ever after]
> 
> -
> 
> If you like this fic, you can [reblog it on tumblr](http://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/173773648350/shouldve-left-my-phone-at-home-cause-this-is-a).


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